Dryland ecosystems make up 40% of the global land surface and support one-sixth of world’s population. Over the past several decades, there has been widespread recognition that increasing human population pressures and land use intensification across dryland ecosystems has resulted in extensive degradation or “desertification” across many of these regions. Our current research focus as a lab group is on restoration of degraded dryland ecosystems with a focus on native plant and biological soil crust restoration.